2023 American Road-trip - Stop 2, Savannah

After last weekend’s NASA trip and witnessing a rocket launch, on the Sunday we headed for Savannah.  As the only driver, the Lost American is a complete hero, because the drive to Savannah was terrible; three thunder storms accompanied by torrential rain.  Several times, the traffic ground to a halt when you could barely see the vehicle in front of you.  

In Savannah, we stayed in the old part of town, on East Bay Street, a short walk downhill to the restaurants and bars along the river.  How do I describe Savannah?  It’s a cross between Kensington and New Orleans, built on a river bank with a major port upstream from the city centre.  

Yes, you can enjoy your pre-dinner drinks on River Street, while watching container ships traverse the river under their own steam.

For dinner, we went to the Fiddlers Bar and Grill, where I had oysters, mussels and the first flounder I’ve encountered outside Australia.  Yum!

After dinner, we wandered a bit through the old town, before heading back to our hotel.  There were trees dripping with moss, gaslights, and even a bar with a cricket picture on the wall:

My first gas lamp:

Next morning, we did a trolley bus tour, which combined history with tourist stops, including a stop outside the only remaining house in Savannah to have intact slave quarters (now a museum). 

 On other stops, there was an actor who addressed us in creole before explaining its origins, and a 17th century gentleman who explained how Georgia gained its colonial charter (the original inspiration for the colony was to rescue impecunious gentlemen from debtors’ prison). The tour was the only time slavery was mentioned to us while we were in Savannah.

This building is the courthouse, which is under reconstruction after the roof collapsed, bringing down two floors with it.

Have an Adventure - part 1, Visiting Hobbits

Last week, before we came to New Zealand, we went to see Simon Reeve, talking about his life, his adventures and his latest book   Simon is lovely bloke, very friendly and kind, exactly the guy you see in his BBC documentaries.  The big takeaway I have from Simon’s talk is set out to have adventures.  Don’t just drift through life, letting it pass you by.  Go to the unusual places; take the risk that you might be uncomfortable; see things that your friends haven’t. 

In some respects, that’s how I’m trying to live this holiday, having adventures.  Sunday, we braved the heights and went up the Skytower in the centre of Auckland.  The view is amazing.

As are the windows in the floor of the viewing tower and in the floor of the lifts.  Although the glass is very strong and thick, you can’t help but try to not walk on it.

Monday, we went a beachside cafe at Takapuna, to have lunch with our friends.   We weren’t the only ones enjoying the food.

Everywhere we go, the sparrows are fearless.  They even entered the cottage in Rotorua.

Tuesday, we went on a winery tour on Waiheke Island, taking the ferry across Auckland Harbour from the iconic Ferry Building.  The nicest of the wines were at Casito Miro, where the photo below was taken.  We bought a bottle of their fortified “Madame Rouge”.   (Alas, the bottle is now empty...)

Wednesday, we drove to Rotorua via Matamata and a place straight out of fantasy.

Yes.  We visited Hobbiton.  First constructed for Lord of the Rings, the 12 acre site sits in the middle of a working sheep and cattle farm.  The original film set was temporary and the farmer was surprised when people started knocking on his door asking to visit the Hobbit holes, soon after the film’s release.   At that point, they only had 4 Hobbit holes remaining out of 30+.  When Peter Jackson went back to film The Hobbit, this time they made the holes permanent.

Hobbiton is well worth the cost of the tour.  We spent hours there, had lunch, did the tour, had a drink in the Green Dragon Inn and took a gazillion photos.  It is a fairytale oasis and it is virtually impossible to chose one photo to sum it all up.

- Pam. (Rotorua will have to wait for another post.)

On my travels

Greetings from Auckland, New Zealand.  We arrived on Thursday, to attend a friend’s wedding.   

The wedding was lovely.  The bride is very charming and they look very happy together.  I hope to get to know her a little before we leave NZ.  The venue was right beside Auckland’s Harbour Bridge.  

Somewhere today, I saw a quote “Auckland: Sydney for Beginners”.  That’s a put-down and it’s just not true.  Auckland is city, proud to stand on her own two feet and not live in anyone-else’s shadow.  The harbour is spectacular and dominated by a small volcanic island in the middle.  It’s called Rangitoto Island and known as “the big baby”.

This is the worst trip so far that I’ve had for jet lag.  We flew London to Singapore, Singapore to Sydney, then Sydney to Auckland.  I was fine in Sydney, but we were delayed for 3 hours  and that meant not arriving in Auckland until nearly 4pm, which seems to have thrown me entirely off kilter.  I’m still waking up in the mornings feeling like a zombie.  Today is the first day that I’ve felt hungry for breakfast, but now I could nap again.  (It’s 9.30am, for goodness sake!)

We’re off shortly to meet up with the bride and groom in an hour.  Tomorrow, we’re doing a winery tour and Wednesday, we’ll be off to Hobbiton, Rotorua and further adventures.

- Pam

On the Road Again

Another evening; another hotel.  

I’m sure I’ve started a blog post with that line before.  I’m travelling for work, visiting the SAP project team in their home office and staying in a nearby hotel.  It’s cut-over weekend and I’m down here until all the data is loaded.

Tonight’s hotel is yet another example of why I prefer either owner-run hotels with lots of character or the big, commercial chains like Premier Inn, where at least you always know what you’re going to get.  You may remember a weird hotel I stayed at in Manchester in March 2016:  so modern and trendy that there was no wall between the bathroom and the bedroom.  

Ring any bells?  To be honest, I can’t remember if I posted my grumble about that hotel here or on Facebook.  At least it had space, even if you could watch the tv from the shower. 

This hotel is worse.  When I stay in a hotel, I usually play a game with myself:  how would I furnish/decorate my room if it was converted into a studio flat.  The modular chain hotels are usually best for that game since their rooms are usually quite well thought out. If you ever want to convert a Holiday Inn into studio flats, I’m you’re woman.  I’d keep the bathroom where it is, put wardrobes along the wall by the door and, on the wall that backs onto the bathroom/faces the main roo. I’d build a small U-shaped kitchen less than 2 metres deep.  Throw in a sofa that converts to a bed, a small table with chairs  and plenty of shelves and, bingo, you have a space you can live in.

Not in tonight’s hotel.  It is another over-decorated, modern room, small and rather oppressive.  They have squeezed as much into it as possible,  There is nowhere to put my open suitcase if I don’t want to use the bed.  In the worst possible sense,  someone let an interior decorator loose.

At least, this time, there’s a divider between the bedroom and the bathroom, even if it does dominate the room.

I’ve just had  room service*, which I ordered over an hour ago.  It took 5 minutes to figure out how to place my order on the smart-phone-gadget the room has instead of a phone.  Call room service?  Only if you know which symbol to hit.  Naturally, the tray did not fit onto the one-and-only table top.

This was the best I could do.  That white thing at the back is a Dyson fan.  Why do you need a fan in an air conditioned room???  (The other side is a Tassimo coffee machine.)

Please God, I don’t get nightmares from the stripes!

- Pam

* Yes, I ordered room service.  England were playing** in the World Cup and, of course, I wanted to watch.  Also, the bar/restaurant downstairs were heaving.  Was it worth it?  No.  I’d have had a better meal in the Subway down the street.  Only the G&T was worth the wait.

** They lost to Belgium.  

A Summer of Culture and Sport

This is my summer - a summer of culture and sport.  I’ve fulfilled one long-term ambition (seeing Rick Wakeman perform Journey to the Centre of the Earth), enjoyed the football World Cup, the Commonwealth Games, an opera (La Traviata), a rock festival in Hyde Park (watching Black Sabbath, Faith No More, Motorhead and Sound Garden), several Proms (with 7 to go plus Proms-in-the-Park), the tennis (I went to Queens for the day and watched Wimbledon on the telly), and the cricket (two series:  England vs Sri Lanka and now England vs India).

Monday of last week was my birthday.  After two weeks in which I saw Simple Minds perform at Kew-the-Music, drove from London to Scotland, went to four events at the Commonwealth Games (the opening ceremony, Rugby 7’s semi-finals, hockey and the athletics on 100m finals night), delivered the FY15 Plan (budget) to the Powers That Be in Glasgow, re-enacted the Battle of Bannockburn, attended a 60th birthday party, attended three Prom concerts (a Greek-themed one, Mozart’s Requiem and the War Horse Prom) and went to the Ballet (Swan Lake),  I took a much needed day off work on my birthday and crashed out.

It took me the best part of a week to recover from the Scotland trip plus the weekends that bookended it.  Scotland was a mixture of holiday to attend the Commonwealth Games and work, both coupled with little sleep – I trekked into the Glasgow office on 4 days including on the morning after the Opening Ceremony, when we’d got home at 2.30am and I had to be up at 6am in order to get the one-and-only direct train into Glasgow from Inverkeithing.  

 Somewhere in there, I've also managed two overnight trips to Manchester - it doesn't feel like work when you're spending the time at work with friends - plus several days working in the Tower Bridge office.   After one of those days at Tower Bridge, I even managed to extend my birthday celebrations by going for drinks/dinner with Dark.  (We were surprised at 9pm when there was a gun salute at the Tower.  I can't find out why there was a salute at that time so I've assumed it was to commemorate the start of the Siege of Lierge in WW1.)

The weather has been glorious, too – long, hot sunny days for most of the last two months.  I managed to get sunburnt at Queens and again at the Commonwealth Games (I never thought I’d ever get sunburnt in Glasgow!).  

As an August baby, I'm a child of the Sun - I was born in the week that Spring habitually returns to Melbourne.  Long, hot, sunny summer days feel like my birthright.  Bring them on Apollo.  Bring them on.

- Pam

Another Opening, Another Show

Or, in my case, "Another suitcase, another hotel".

I'm in Glasgow tonight, staying in a new-to-me hotel around the corner from the office. It's a nice place. My most pressing desire, right now, is to figure out how to switch off the air-conditioning. Yea gods! Is it noisy!

I have two more weeks of flights and hotels. It isn't like the "old days", when I'd turn the Toy right at the end of our street, then head west or north for a hundred miles or so. Air travel has certain constraints: the two items of cabin luggage rule (which means packing my handbag in my case); the 100ml liquids rule (which leaves me hoping the hotel has decent shampoo, since I left mine at home); and the take-your-laptop-out-of-your-bag-at-security rule (which inevitably means juggling multiple belongings like an apprentice octopus).

This definitely isn't the glamorous side of business travel. Certainly, it's more fun when you aren't travelling alone (this trip, I'm travelling with my commercial director), but glamorous it isn't. Nothing is glamorous about being up at 4am to get to the airport before 6. Nothing glamorous about never seeing the city outside the office you are visiting. (Although you know when you've done a flight too regularly when the cabin crew know you by name. (Ahem. Boss.)) Still, I had a friendly greeting from several colleagues and that is worth it's weight in gold. It is nice to know you're liked by people you only see a couple of times a year.

Now, if I can only figure out how to switch off that damn fan....

- Pam

Tired

I am tired. Had to fly "up north" this morning to participate in the delivery of two days' training. I've been awake since before 4am and it is beginning to show. My concentration is shot (and has been for hours).

I could have sworn I had the beginning of a blog post earlier - something about sunrise over Heathrow - but it's gone. All I can tell you is that the sunrise was particularly good when viewed from Terminal 5 this morning. Very yellow/orange.

Oh and the ladies toilets reminded me of something I observed in Bahrain: even the most Arabic of women will, if given the choice, wait to use a western-style toilet rather than a squatting one. Architects take note.

- Pam

ps: The walls in this hotel are paper thin. My boss is in the next room and I can hear him on the phone. Am 99% sure the guy on the other side, who just coughed, is another colleague.

Photos from Oman

Here are the long awaited photos from Oman.  We took over 600 -  I've whittled them down to  a few dozen 47 for you.  (Note:  if you click on any one of the photos, Blogger now allows you to scroll through them all like a slide show.)

We landed in Muscat on Thursday 22nd March.  On the Friday, we drove through the mountains to Nizwa,

stopping off along the way at a picturesque fort for photographs.






(You'll see a lot of that pink shirt.  I wore it as a jacket and cover-up over my t-shirt, whenever we went out.)

Nizwa is deep in the interior of the country.  It was once the capital of Oman.  Nizwa Fort was built to defend the sultanate from attack.  It is huge and impenetrable.  It was restored in the 1990's and is now a museum.  Photo of the interior courtyard:

 

Views from the roof of the fort:

Saturday, DH and I had a lazy day, lounging around his sister's house in Seeb.  We mainly watched - and played with - the cats.

 Here are the views from the roof:

Seeb is a fishing village on the outskirts of Muscat, with a lovely beach.

 

On the Sunday, we visited the Royal Opera House in Muscat before spending another lazy day, hanging around the pool at the Hyatt Hotel.

 

 

(Lots of very bright, white marble at the Opera House.)

Monday, we took a taxi to Muttrah Souk and Corniche, stopping off at the Sultan Qaboos Mosque along the way.

Naturally, I had to wrap up.

 It was worth it.  The interiors are stunning.  This is a doorway in the women's mosque:

Another beautifully carved door:

The chandeliers in the men's mosque are beautiful:

The walls are covered in beautiful mosaics:

This one is particularly beautiful.  It is a shelf holding copies of the Koran:

It is a stunning building, isn't it?  We went from them to Muttrah, where the entrance to the Souk is on the sea front at Muttrah Corniche:

In the harbour were a couple of old Omani dhow's.  I am 99% sure the warship in the background is from New Zealand.

The fort above the harbour was built by the Portuguese, I believe.

We didn't take any photos of the interior of the Souk.  It is made up of dozens of arcades, lined with shops.  In the main arcade, all the shopkeepers tried to sell me a pashmina (or two).  Mindful of my New Year's Resolution to only buy 12 items of clothing in 2012, I resisted.  Anyway, I've already got two - who needs more?  The other thing they all seemed to sell was frankincense.   However, once you got beyond the main arcade, the Souk stopped being focused on tourists and started being a market for locals.  Down one arcade, I even found shops selling knitting yarn and crochet cotton.  (Unable to identify the fibre content of the yarn, I didn't buy it.  I think it was made in Japan.)

Tuesday was another lazing-around day.  Wednesday, we went to a shopping mall (highlight: Cinnabon cinnamon rolls), and then to the fete at my SIL's school.

Our next big adventure was the Thursday, when we went out into the desert to spend the night at Al Raha Tourist Camp in the Wahabi Sands region of Oman, approximately 240km from Muscat.  The accomodation is basic but Al Raha is where the locals go, including the Omani Royal Family.



The rooms are motel style:

 This is the road to the camp.

Basically, you drive down the Ibra-Sur road, turn right at the Shell garage at Biddiyah, do another right at the end of the street, then turn left a kilometre or so after the tarmac ends, then continue on until you spot the camp.

After unpacking, we drove out into the desert to picnic and wait for the sun to set:

 We played around with the panorama setting on DH's camera.



And were entertained by a scarab beetle:

DH walked down the hill to photograph some camels.

The sunset was worth the wait.

 Back at camp that night, we were entertained by several musicians.

Friday morning, we rode camels:

And quad bikes:

Don't we look like good Aussies, wearing our Akubras?

The quad bikes were great fun.  I kept feeling like something was missing, then I realised what it was.  There should have been a dog sitting on the back of the quad bike, clinging on for dear life as we rounded up sheep or cattle.

We stopped in Baddiyah on the way back to Muscat, where we had a cup of tea.  Despite swollen fingers, I did a little bit of knitting.

In many respects, Baddiyah is your typical dusty frontier town.  It could be almost anywhere:

Sadly, my reactions weren't fast enough to get the shot of a camel being ferried out into the desert on the back of a ute/pick-up truck.

Pretty much the only down-side of the trip (apart from it not being long enough), was that - yet again - I was mosquito fodder.  Just take a look at my feet:

They look like I've got chicken pox or something similar.  I ended up with 24 bites on the left one alone. 

- Pam